How often do you inspect your hives?
Question If you have two deeps for brood, do you inspect the top and the bottom box? (seems like a lot of work!)
Question What time of day is best for inspecting?
Question Plenty more questions but won't ask them now! Very Happy
My first year, nearly every week. Last year was my learning year, and my "getting comfy with bees" year. I also watched the hives every sunny day for at least a few minutes. Just put a chair out there and took my after-work adult bevvy out, sat, watched, and tossed a ball for my dog. I learned a lot just watching the entrance, and my dog lost weight. :)
This year, I open them up twice a month, and no, I don't pull apart the brood boxes. If I see normal activity, I'm assuming all is well. This past weekend, I supered, and didn't pull them all apart. I scraped some badly drawn comb, saw that numbers were increasing, the hives smelled good (no kidding--I can smell the honey, I don't smell anything funky, so I assume that all's well in brood land).
In a year like this, when I have bees drawing foundation, I am checking for badly drawn comb, so that's a little more intrusive, but I'd rather not pull apart the brood nest every time. If I do, sooner or later I'll probably roll the queen or something, so I figure I'll let them do their thing.
I inspect on a sunny day between 10 am and warm sunny evening. I want max bees out foraging when I inspect, so everyone is happy and busy.
It really is fun for me to do inspections, but I think less disturbance is better for the bees, so a total break down of the brood nest isn't something I want to do, unless I suspect there's a problem. Checking activity at the front and peeking under the hood now and then to make sure numbers are increasing tells me that comb is being drawn, and bees are hatching.
Since these are packages, there isn't much chance they'll swarm. Next spring, that will be more of a worry, and I'll have to adjust the inspections to check for queen cells, decide if they need to be split, and so on.